Knee-deep in data washing – more on that at a later stage – I paused for a moment to consider future scenarios for the DAAO data in the new iteration. After a quick spot of googling, I came across the Visualization Showcase of the Media Art Archives.

This is a wonderful initiative for interrogating the structures that support and develop new media art. My favourite is the network analysis on submissions to the Prix Arts Electronica: Media Art as Social Process. I can imagine the DAAO data providing a similar purpose! There are a number of different datasets and explanations of visualization tools used. I thoroughly recommend having a good sticky-beak!

These new forms reflect and transmit scholarly impact: that dog-eared (but uncited) article that used to live on a shelf now lives in Mendeley, CiteULike, or Zotero–where we can see and count it. That hallway conversation about a recent finding has moved to blogs and social networks–now, we can listen in. The local genomics dataset has moved to an online repository–now, we can track it. This diverse group of activities forms a composite trace of impact far richer than any available before. We call the elements of this trace alt-metrics.

Speaking of moving scholarship online, our fine institution has just migrated the unsw repository of research output to a new user interface. Unsworks now has improved functionality and a more similar look and feel to existing library services. Explore it here.

TechCrunch has reported a leaked slide from a Yahoo internal meeting which intimates the once popular social bookmarking site delicious.com (owned by Yahoo) may be shut down. It’s early days yet, only being a couple of hours since the report appeared on TechCrunch, but the online world is already responding.

At the moment, #delicious is trending on twitter, Australia – not worldwide, which is likely to be a time zone issue. The general reception seems to be “Nooooo!” and an online petition #savedelicious on activist social media tool act.ly has been started. I have signed it immediately, because this is the one tool that has stayed the course throughout my Masters in Information and Knowledge Management, keeping track of information, issues and developements in the libraries and information sciences sector. The silver lining of this cloud is that I can share with you a global live map of all the people who have signed this petition! Social media is marvellous, until they shut it down. However, let’s be circumspect about this, as there is no official communication confirming this from Yahoo.

Obviously, though, people like to be prepared, and there are already alternatives to delicious being passed around, evernote, for example, and zotero are two that come to mind. A list of other alternatives is available here. I’ll be keeping my ears open for more news about this, because this has pretty big ramifactions for not only the daao blog, but also designing research capabilities into the daao. It just goes to show that software / application dependency for collaborative research tools must be addressed, and that future-proofing is built into any strategy.

Recently, inventor and writer Mark Pesce blogged about web 2.0 and underlying motivations for why people engage collaboratively on crowdsourced web projects. What I like about this post is how he has grounded design theory in a number of social behaviours that drive web 2.0 and social media: sharing, connecting, contributing, regulating, and iterating. It is a very good discussion of value in today’s standards of web content, where relevance and currency is dependant on the openness of your data.

When you think about your design – both technically and from the user’s experience – you must consider how open you want to be, and weigh the price of openness (extra work, unpredictability) against the price of being closed (less useful). The highest praise you can receive for your work is when someone wants to use it in their own. For this to happen, you have to leave the door open for them. If you publish the APIs to access the data you collect; if you build your work modularly, with clearly defined interfaces; if you use standards such as RSS and REST where appropriate, you will create something that others can re-use.

I thought this DAAO blog would be a great place to share the direction I’m going with looking at community engagement, especially with regards to social media strategy. As part of my literature review, I’m looking at practical guides to social media, and this post is a little foray into the ideas coming though in this field.

Tharon Howard (2010) has a nice way of talking about successful elements of online communities. These are renumeration, influence, belonging and significance. This structure is useful because it foregrounds sociability – social beings in a social context. And, if there’s one thing I’ve noticed about successful how to books on social media and web design, it’s the chatty informal tone of people talking about people. (see also Brown 2006, Weinschenk, 2010)

Remuneration: or the return on investment of peoples’ time and energy. This element can be reflected in the interface design, in the information architecture, the content…etc. Howard suggests techniques such as seeding discussion, removing the fear factor by providing examples of how to participate, creating regular events, using a system to represent membership contribution levels.

Influence: giving members a clear sense that they have a voice and actually have control over how that voice is heard within the community. This area is concerned with actively asking participants why they are interested in joining, and using profiles to give identity to your community base. Also includes tips on grouping like-minded contributors together – eg novices with novices, so that people can learn from each other.

Belonging: cultivating a sense of community, and emotional attachment. My inner buddhist is a little alarmed at aspiring to create this, (detach! detach!) however it is important to note the emotional pay offs in social media. When someone 🙂 at me on twitter with a thanks for #followfriday, I know that I feel a little more connected to the twittersphere. Howard recommends techniques such as establishing protocols and routines, (eg, like twitter’s #followfriday) and maintaining consistent visual identity with colours, symbols etc. A story of origin can be very powerful (ahem, bible!) in cohering a community, but it could be as simple as a congenial fireside chat paragraph on the about page.

Significance: the broader picture, and success of the whole community. Howard explores the paradox of exclusivity and social capital (oh hai Bordieu!), in a chapter that discusses PR, marketing, and policy making. It’s a way of talking about strategic direction as it relates to how people relate to their community. For “community designers” this aspect returns user approaches to the broader general strategic direction of creating the community in the first place. After a semester of Knowledge Management earlier this year, I have renewed interest in strategic direction / organisational strategy / mission statements etc! Detailed analysis of these documents will provide the best guidance for your community building and knowledge sharing strategies.

What do you think about the experience of being in an online community? Are there any that stand out as outstandingly good or shudderingly awful? I’m keen to hear your thoughts.

PS – please email g.fuller[at]unsw.edu.au or l.stokes[at]unsw.edu.au to turn on commenting rights if you are not yet a member of this blog.